Tech Chair POV Part 2: The Phoenix Rises!

I want to go ahead and start this piece to answer a simple question that I get regularly: 

Why does your company allow you to do this? 

It’s a really good question. Why would my company allow me to take 4 days at a time to help run these contests… Because it matters. This is not an ad for Amitrace but instead a nod to the commitment that we are making to do what we think is right for the educators who work so hard every day. In the month of April, I will have spent 6 nights in a hotel, driven thousands of miles, not worked officially for 6 days, and spent a decent amount of money on “crafty” and printing. My company loves that I am willing to do it. 

It helps me stay aware of the classroom and all of the challenges teachers face. It helps me to build relationships that I otherwise couldn’t and most important to me, it allows me to work with and support teachers in a way that I never could. 

Being the technical chair for these contests allows me to expose new teachers to techniques and workflows that I would not have been able to otherwise. It allows me to glean information from veteran teachers that I may never have had the opportunity to meet. If you have kids at home, you may know this statement “It fills my bucket.” 

Now to the real purpose of this piece… My POV at the technical chair for SkillsUSA Video News Production at the Alabama State Leadership and Skills Conference (That’s why EDU has soo many abbreviations!). 

It’s Monday - 8am local time. I have been on the phone since 5:30 with my kids, my wife, a couple of friends calling with great news from the Easter weekend. I’ve been on Facebook messenger trying to connect the right people and I have done a little work - written some quotes, emails, and phonecalls. 

I’m headed over to the University of South Alabama in about 30 minutes to set up the studio and get a final plan for tomorrow’s contest. 

I feel so much more pressure with this contest than I did last week. I feel like this is my Phoenix story after the contest last year. Last year was rough to say the least…. 

I was contacted and asked if I would help with the contest. I agreed. I was excited. It was presented to me as “just carry the folder and help make sure it goes well.” The person that told me that was in the unfortunate position of stretched too thin to do a ton of research as to what was needed. 

So I did - I met at 7am on the day of the contest, carried the folder and quickly found out that I wasn’t to carry the folder, I was carrying the contest. Again, I am not bashing. I know how massive these contests are and when you are managing over 100 of them, things slip through… 

I’ll just cut it short and say that about 2 hours into the contest, I almost called my boss and asked how important the relationships in Alabama were… 

Here’s quick list of what had happened up to that point:

• The studio wasn’t set up

• The stories that were to be printed for the competitors to use for research were actually scripts

• There was nowhere for the students to write/stack their stories.

• The printer had no ink

• Prior to my arrival it was agreed upon that the teams would be split into a morning and afternoon session and that the teams would all get a tour of the campus (This meant a 2 hour gap of nothingness… See Part 1 to understand why)

It was beyond frustrating. I was trying to keep a straight face. A couple of raised eyebrows as I made eye contact with teachers but I tried to play the duck (smooth on top of the water but my feet were going 100MPH under the surface. 

Again, I am not at all blaming or disparaging but I was not a happy camper. Truly the only reason I was still there is because I rode the bus. If I had been in my car, I probably would have made the couple of tough phone calls and been done. I was that mad! (but hopefully no one knew until now)

Then it happened. The thing that made me realize HOW bad things were and that I needed to find my gumption, put away my pride and stick to it… I was sitting in the “library” where kids were writing their stories and a young man and woman walked up to me and said “we are sorry we are late. There was traffic.” They were the team that was missing from role call. I just thought they didn’t come. Apparently, a little late for them was 7 hours…. 7 whole hours late…. I admit that I lost all respect for their advisor for just sending them in to me while they sat on the bench out front. When I told them, “sorry but you are 7 hours late and we are almost done here,” then they decided it was important enough for them to come. The sob story started, the tears started flowing, the accusations, all of it… so we call the decision makers and asked what we were to do. They said “you are already running late, why not just let them compete..” It was at that point that I knew I was going to stick it out and come back. If that’s the tone, we have to change it. 

BTW: I put the team at the end of the day obviously, they didn’t have the full amount of time but they were aware of that before they started. They were by far the worst competitive team I have ever witnessed. Their TD never touched the switcher. He sat with his back to it with his hands on his knees watching his watch countdown from 3 mins. The floor manager was “calling” what was supposed to be a show. Their talent laughed their way through their 73 seconds of script, then the floor manager told them to “just make it up.” That may have made me scream a couple of times in the 6 hour drive home the next morning. 

This year is different though. I ran the region contest - there are some changes needed there too but that’s for a different time. There were 8 teams that moved on from the region contest to state. I learned a week ago that one of the teams didn’t register for state so we only have 7 competing. 

I am beyond excited to work with Johnny, Nadia, Byron and George from the University of South Alabama this year to produce the contest. We have talked several times in the last month or so to come up with a great plan to get the students a great experience and to see this amazing campus (I may have brought my camera just to shoot around USA). 

The flow for this one is a little different than that of Georgia and Tennessee. At both of those contests, the orientation happens at the place where the competition happens. Because of the distance, the students here won’t have that opportunity. The orientation happens at the convention center after opening ceremonies. So I tweaked the times a little - losing a team helped too - the student’s production window is actually 35 minutes. I added 5 minutes in order to make time for the students to move from the pre production area in another building to the studio and 10 minutes so the teams can get familiar with the studio and control room. It’s going to make the contest take a little longer but I think it will help things run more smoothly.

So orientation will look different because the students all take their SkillsUSA knowledge test at the same time during orientation as well. It will be completed on their phones and in the end it is used in the final scoring so it’s important. I will also gather the student resumes. Again a formality that most don’t understand but I get it. The resumes aren’t as important in our contests but for construction and other contests, there are employers hiring students off the contest floor so it makes sense and it’s one of those things where if you require one to do it, you have to require them all to do it. It’s also a good practice though most of the resumes I have seen from these contests aren’t worth the effort it took for me to put them in a folder and later shred - it’s quite easy to see that most advisors aren’t teaching good resume writing but just teaching “check the box.” 

Orientation was a way to make sure of a couple of things. The first and most important is that the bus from the convention center leaves at 7am. It leaves at 7 so don’t show up at 7:05 or your contest will be over at that point. The other thing is to give everyone the schedule for the day. It’s a tight schedule but we are going to keep to it as best we can. I told the students that the “6 o’clock news starts at 6. It’s an hour long and end at 6:59:59…. And if you can’t make either of those things happen, that stinks and no one cares about your feelings…” 

The thing that seems to always lock up kids' brains is what goes into the 3 minute show. “Does the 5 seconds of black at the front and back go in the show?” - No. “So is the three minutes going to include everything from when we go from the 5 seconds of black all the way until we go back to 5 seconds of black?” - Yes. I’m still not sure why that was a question. 

Tuesday is contest day… 

5:30am - Leave the hotel to get breakfast, coffee, and some pics of the USA campus. 

7:20am - I finally make my way to the studio and as I walk into the building, the bus of competitors shows up… They are much earlier than we planned. 

7:30am - A quick address to the teams to make sure they know what to expect. I don’t tell them that someone from the local news will be there but I do tell them that people will be taking pics and videos of the event so ignore them and don’t smile! 

8:10am  - The first team checks in. There are only 2 rooms we can use in the building, one is a “library” and the other is called a computer lab. Neither do justice to their names at this point but I know the school is looking to build them out. The lab is essentially 4 desks with 2 computers on each. It’s going to be a tight fit but it will work! 

(Every 30 minutes a new team starts working on their show. 

9:50 am - The first team is making their way to the studio. I expand the time between the preproduction window and the team’s studio times because of the amount of time it takes to travel between the building and get all of the stuff done before the teams can compete. That pays off with the first group because while the school had an engineer come and make sure everything was working, audio bit us. The Tricaster session we were using in the contest didn’t have the audio routed properly.  So it took a little bit for us to figure out what was wrong. We paused the clock for 10 minutes or so while we worked it out. 

Once we got it figured out, the clock was running again but we were behind schedule…. 

(The goal of the day was to stay on time but I knew the teams would be anxious to get their show done and we would be back on time soon…. By the fourth group, we were back on time so I call the day a win.) 

1:20pm - The show is over. The last team is walking out of the door to get on the big USA Jags tour bus to head to the cafeteria for a late lunch and a tour of the building. I am on my way to meet with the judges to debrief and see what we need to do. 

During the debrief we rewatch the shows, the judges make points about things they like and don’t like. Things that confuse them about the state of high school news (more on that in a different article….) and we just admire what the students do. I have said time and again that in the world of video production contests, this one is the king. No other contests require such a tight timeline and an immediate performance. Not to mention the teamwork it takes to pull this off. 

2:51pm - The hunt for Bennie is on. Bennie Shiererman is the coordinator for the contests and who I need to deliver the folder to. A walk across the convention center and an elevator ride to the contest scoring lair and I find him. We discuss the contest. Look at the scores and for the first time, I put schools and teachers to the numbers. The three teams that finished in the top were who I expected after watching the videos. The overall scores were very tight. 

3:26pm - A whopper junior in hand, Allman Bros’ Soulshine in my ears and my car in the parking lot at the hotel. It’s over. I am tired. 30 flights of stairs over 5 miles of walking and 7 teams shoved into a writing room, shuttled to a studio, scrutinized by a team of judges, then shoved out so the next team can come in. I am tired! 

4:36pm - I am sitting at the little desk in the round room of my hotel (seriously it’s round - as an audio guy the parabolic affect on my words drives me insane). I hear the set up. I told the students that people would be filming but I didn’t tell them it was going to be the local news stations because I knew that would amp up the nerves. The reporter shot a ton of b-roll, a couple of interviews, and a stand up and was gone before we knew it. The package came out great. She did a great job of using her 60 seconds to tell the story of the student competitors. 

5:07pm - It’s now time to put a bow on this event. This article means it’s officially over for me - minus uploading the videos and sharing the videos, overall scores, and judges notes to the teams. That’s another task for another day. I need a shower after the miles in the Mobile heat and humidity and a steak… 

I would be remiss to not thank the behind the scenes team that made the contest happen. Nadia Bush from USA organized the bus, met the teams, took them to lunch, gave them a tour, and got them back. Johnny Stevens who was my main point of contact last year and helped me build the foundation for this year. Byron Day, Candace Finley, and Hayden (A USA student who is already employed at the local fox affiliate!) who served as judges this year. Alex was the best teleprompter operator we had! 

The phoenix rose…. The event that crashed and burned last year soared high this year and seven teams got a high quality contest that allowed them to showcase their skills! Tomorrow morning will feature an early ride home but a stop at a Chevron on I-65 for some breakfast gumbo that I have been warned will change my life! 

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Meet the Author, Tom White

Tom White is the Education and House of Worship Specialist at Amitrace. Tom's role is to help educators build better programs through better training, planning, and equipment. Before joining Amitrace, Tom was the Broadcast Engineer at Grady College of Journalism and Communication at the University of Georgia. Prior to that role, Tom taught at Morgan County High School and Rockdale Career Academy where he and his student produced thousands of live streams for sports, news, and community events. Tom’s program at the Rockdale Career Academy received the NFHS Network Program Of The Year in 2016 and his program at Morgan County High School received the New Program of the Year title in 2018. Tom has been a long time contributor to many publications and is the host of Teaching to The Test Pattern Podcast.

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